District Attorney Craig Watkins has lamented that officers involved in shootings are rarely indicted in Dallas County and wants his office to run parallel investigations along with police departments.

Watkins’ proposal is a nonstarter with Dallas Police Association officials, who say they have robust internal investigations and don't want a probe run by a political office that seems intent on prosecuting police officers.

But in Harris County, the DA’s office has been running concurrent investigations for years. Houston Police Officers Union President Ray Hunt said the DA’s office there is cooperative. Watkins has said he wants to use Harris County as his model.

Julian Ramirez, who runs the Harris County DA’s civil rights division, recently talked to The Dallas Morning News about the investigations there.

What does your office do after police notify them that there has been an officer-involved shooting?

We will send a team comprised of an investigator and a prosecutor out to the location where the shooting took place. There may be occasions where we send out more people than that, but that’s how we get the ball rolling. That’s 24/7. Every day of the year, we have an attorney and prosecutor on call.

Why have your own investigations?

It can give the public confidence that an objective eye is looking at these shootings. If you didn’t have an outside agency looking at it, a person might have a reason to question whether a police agency can investigate one of their own. But that’s not to say the agencies don’t do a good and thorough job.

What is your relationship with police departments?

We generally have a good working relationship. They have no issue with allowing us to come into the crime scene area and take photographs and talk to the folks involved. What we find is we have more of a cooperative relationship than we do an antagonistic one.

What are your investigators’ backgrounds?

Typically, our investigators already have had a lengthy career in law enforcement. The investigators we have on staff are very experienced, and a couple of them have extensive experience investigating homicides.